A critical challenge to understanding, preventing and treating HIV and HIV-related diseases is the need for human clinical specimens and data from individuals with specific clinical and epidemiologic characteristics, and access to new, innovative laboratory tools needed to analyze biological specimens. The mission of the Clinical and Retrovirology Research Core (CRRC), a fusion of the Clinical Research and Retrovirology Cores, is to support access by local, regional and international investigators to clinical specimens, data and the assays they need to conduct clinical and translational HIV research projects. To accomplish this, the CRRC has developed specific resources to link participants recruited through the major UW-associated HIV clinics in Seattle (or samples and data from them) to individual HIV investigators. The CRRC will accomplish its mission in five ways: First, for investigators seeking eligible research subjects to enroll in specific studies, the CRRC will continue the highly successful Research Referral Service. Second, for translational investigators seeking human specimens, the CRRC will use two approaches with complementary strengths: 1) a more limited version of the existing HIV Specimen Repository with prospective follow-up and routine specimen and data collection, and 2) an enhanced version of the existing Special Specimen Collection Service with specific project-directed collection of specimens and data. Third, to address the need for control specimens from HIV-negative persons, the CRRC will establish a new registry of HIV negative patients interested in participating in HIV research studies. Fourth, to support laboratory analyses for specific HIV studies, the CRRC will provide basic testing and develop specialized laboratory assays required for specific HIV studies. Finally, to accelerate the pace of planned studies and stimulate new directions of research, the CRRC will create and strengthen linkages with other UW CFAR cores and other CFARs (CNICS). Specifically, the CRRC will coordinate regular meetings with the immunology, clinical epidemiology and computational biology cores to scrutinize and integrate requests for services made to any of the cores and maximize efficient and novel uses of samples and laboratory testing capacity.
The new CRRC will be essential to clinical investigators who must recruit subjects into research studies, to basic scientists needing access to the human specimens necessary to the conduct of bench experiments and to translational scientists who require both clinical data (phenotypes) and biological specimens to study the pathogenesis of HIV disease and determine the biological correlates of HIV transmission and disease progression
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